


Commis

by levendis



Series: Prompt Fics [108]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Bacon, Domestic Fluff, Mildly Dubious Consent, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-20 07:51:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10658169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levendis/pseuds/levendis
Summary: the one where the TARDIS attempts to flirt with Bill





	Commis

**Author's Note:**

> for anon, who asked: could you write something where the TARDIS expresses love for Bill with a really posh kitchen and laboratory? Her own personal test kitchen?

The first night (“night”) Bill stays in the TARDIS, the Doctor gives her a rambling ten-part set of directions in re: where the guest bedroom is. He grins, she grins, he grins wider, she gives him a thumbs-up, he returns it. She walks with a measured pace to where she’s fairly sure he can’t see her, and then she bolts. And doesn’t forget the instructions so much as discovers they don’t make sense, since everything looks the same, and ‘pass the Mechanical Turk’ doesn’t work at a T-junction with two Mechanical Turks. She runs and the ground feels weird and she sporadically opens doors until she finds what she optimistically hopes is some sort of futuristic Space Toilet, but which is probably a bougie Space Laundry Chute. She vomits into the hole, closes the lid, and straightens herself out before wobbling back into the corridor.

Professor “The Doctor” What had said this was to get her acclimated to time/space travel but she’s 95% certain he’s just lost, or something is broken. So it’s reasonable to have puked in a closet and then walked away, if they’re doing lies. This place is big enough, he probably won’t even notice. Right? Right. She wipes her mouth and soldiers on.

 

* * *

She finds a room that looks a lot like the Doctor's office at the university, but with a sofa and fewer nick-knacks. She takes off her jacket and trainers and scrunches up into a corner of the sofa. She wakes up in a four-poster bed, some huge unnecessary thing, surrounded by at least twenty stuffed animals. Mostly fish.

“Okay. That’s…fine,” she says, extricating herself from the pile of plush squid.

A light in the corner blinks twice.

 

* * *

Bill follows the smell of bacon to a nondescript, unmarked door, behind which is an incredibly 80s kitchen.

The “The Doctor” Doctor is sitting at the table, with a bib on over his fifteen coats. “Mornin’,” he mumbles through a mouthful of, she assumes, Space Bacon.

“Top of it,” Nardole says. Cooking, presumably, more Space Bacon. His apron says “Kiss the Cook” and he’s wearing it with an air of hopefulness.

“Right, okay. So. All of time and space, you said.” She sits down across the table from the Doctor.

“Mmm-hmm.”

“And this place, it’s like Harry Potter, yeah? Room of Requirement type thing.” She eyes the plate of bacon Nardole sits down on the table, and then side-eyes the Doctor as he inhales it.

“Sorta. Basically.” The Doctor waves a piece of bacon around like it’s a wand. Nardole is staring at him with a mix of exasperation and all-too-familiar fondness. This is a weird situation, that she’s in. How did this happen again?

“So,” she starts. She pauses to regroup. “Why’s it so shite?”

“I beg your pardon,” Nardole says.

“A variety of reasons,” the Doctor says.

“It’s _homey_ ,” Nardole says.

“Like you could have anything, anything at all. Like. The best of the best, and rare stuff. Thomas Keller-type things. And instead you have a grandma kitchen.” She grabs a piece of bacon off the Doctor’s plate and bites into it as punctuation.

“I think it’s lovely,” Nardole says. The Doctor is staring at her with That Look, the one where she knows she’s somehow done something he finds interesting but she doesn’t know what or if it’s good-interesting or bad-interesting.

A light in the corner blinks twice.

 

* * *

It’s not that she’s living here, she just stays over sometimes. Like a sleepover. She draws the line at Nardole trying to braid her hair (a firm line, and he’s still melodramatically nursing his hand two days later.) (The Doctor, with his rat-tail braid, attempts to create some sort of silent empathy with her and fails.) Bill’s bedroom now has four stuffed animals and the bed is more reasonable. These things happen, in space. There’s a squid, a cat, a…like a Pokemon, maybe, it looks like a sandwich but with eyes, and a black furry sphere. If that's how the ship is interpreting her requirements, then...well, a bit off the mark, but it's the thought that counts. Or something.

Two doors down from her bedroom, there’s now a room with a placard that just reads “<3”. There’s a picture of her above it: she’s making a truly ridiculous expression and she’s 95% sure no one could have been there with a camera to take it. Unless she’s being surveilled. Like, by the ship. With the security cameras. The cyberpunk future has taken a picture of her with about 1,000 teeth and a double chin and printed it out in alarmingly high resolution. And taped it roughly to the wall.

“Cool,” she says. It’s not cool. She opens the door and, oh.

“For you,” the Doctor says. He’s leaning precariously and, she guesses, in a way he thinks makes him look suave, against a 140-quart Hobart mixer. The massive kind with the mangled-hand ‘don’t touch’ warning graphic.

“You did this.” She steps gingerly over the gleaming tile floor. One of five Space Alto-Shaams beeps happily at her.

“She did this.” He gestures vaguely at everything. “The TARDIS.”

“Your ship has a gender. Like. Does it? Or is it just that thing, where straight men need inanimate vessels to be female or else they might accidentally think about taking it up the arse?” She drifts her hand along a hanging array of whisks, all gleaming bright and new.

“I’m not human,” he says, tilting towards the bowl of the mixer. “And I’m not - anyway. Language and cultural barrier, let’s assume. But she is a she.” He sensuously rubs the heel of his boot against the floor. She gets a weird and slightly unwelcome thought that he wants to, and/or has, fucked his vehicle.

“And she made this for me.”

“She made this for you.” He’s grinning at her.

“I’m not into - like if this is a threesome thing, I don’t-”

“What? No. _No_.”

“Okay.” She assembles the five still-functioning cells in her brain, and smiles back at him.

“I mean she does-”

Oh god.

“-There are certain effects,” he says. He’s half inside the mixing bowl and looks like he really, really wished he hadn’t said that. “If it’s, you know. Consensual.”

Oh _god_ oh god ohgodohgodoh-

“Thanks for the pro-tip,” she says brightly. Or attempts to, anyway.

“So I’ll leave you to it, then,” he says, extricating himself and hopping off in that bizarre run. “Be safe, good luck, have fun.” He slams the door shut behind him.

 

And Bill’s here, she is. In a, what, sentient car, that travels through time and can make anything happen inside her - because she’s a her, apparently - who, uh. Likes her? In that way? Is she gonna fuck a car? She doesn’t particularly want to fuck a car. But this is a really, really nice kitchen. A walk-in refrigerator filled with who knows what, dry goods bursting with whatever. Time onions, who knows. Posh time onions, probably, organic free-trade free-range sentient onions. Top of the line, best of the best. She could do sous-vide. Or molecular gastronomy. Or chips, even, in that fryer that is cleaner than any fryer ever is outside a future time/space car that’s apparently flirting with her.

“…Thanks?” She takes her jacket off and puts on an apron, from the stainless-steel bin of aprons. It says “Kiss the cook”.

The light in the corner blinks twice. Bill nods back, and gets to work.


End file.
